Chirp

Pulse duration

Ultrashort pulse

Materials science

Detector

Self-phase modulation

Telecommunications

Femtosecond pulse shaping

Physics

Pulse compression

Nonlinear optics

Phase modulation

Optics

Femtosecond

Acoustics

Quantum mechanics

Pulse (music)

Computer science

Modulation (music)

Phase (matter)

Multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan

Dispersion (optics)

Laser

Phase noise

Bandwidth-limited pulse

Radar

Quantum Electronics

The pulse duration at the output of femtosecond lasers is usually close to the Fourier limit, and can be shortened by increasing the spectral width. To this end, use is made of self-phase modulation when a pulse propagates in a medium with cubic nonlinearity. Then, the pulse with a chirp (frequency dependence of the spectrum phase) is compressed due to a linear dispersion element, which introduces a chirp of the same modulus, but opposite in sign. This pulse post-compression, known since the 1960s, has been widely used and is being developed up to the present for pulses with energies from fractions of a nJ to tens of J. The review is devoted to the theoretical foundations of this method, problems of energy scaling, and a discussion of the results of more than 150 experimental studies.

Post-compression of femtosecond laser pulses using self-phase modulation: from kilowatts to petawatts in 40 years